“Fat Wallets, Empty Lives”
Matthew 6:19-24
By: Rev. Ken Sauer, Pastor
Grace UMC, Soddy Daisy, TN
In his book How Much Is Enough? Hungering For God In An Affluent Culture author and Founder of Bread for the World: Arthur Simon writes about Bryce and Ellen, “a couple in their mid-thirties.
They have two sons and a daughter, and on Sundays the family attends church more often than not.
Bryce manages about twenty people in a medium-sized accounting firm.
He receives a good salary and is on a path that he believes may eventually move him into a circle of company executives, so he goes to work early, often stays late, and usually works some on weekends.
Ellen has a part-time job with a public relations firm, which allows her to manage the kids and take care of the house.
None of this is easy, but it has enabled them to buy a house in an upscale neighborhood and a lot of recreational hardware, including a raft of toys, a couple of TVs for the children’s rooms, and a small yacht.
Bryce and Ellen already talk about one day taking early retirement and moving to a place where they can enjoy year-round outdoor sports.
Though deeply in debt, they are able to make timely payments and take pride in contributing ‘more than most’ to church in dollar amount, which at 2.5 percent of their income is about average for church members.
Simon continues, “They would be astonished—probably offended—to have anyone suggest that they are beholden to mammon.
Yet their plans and dreams, and the dreams they are nourishing in their children, are overwhelmingly directed that way.”
Jesus was no killjoy.
“I have come that they may have life and have it to the full,” He tells us in John chapter 10.
Jesus came to invite us into the Father’s Kingdom.
That is abundant life!
Compared to the life Jesus offers, mammon in any amount is poverty!!!
I’ve never heard anyone, near the end of their life lament that they should have spent more time at work, or that they should have made more money.
I have, though, heard many a folk lament the fact that they did not live life to the full through a total commitment to Jesus Christ!!!
Why is it that in the face of such unprecedented prosperity, so many of us feel so empty?
It’s obvious that material stuff can capture our hearts.
What they can’t do is nourish our souls.
Urgently and incessantly, Jesus drew people to God.
This is why we were created.
Nothing else satisfies the longing of our hearts.
Nothing but the source of Joy can give us joy!
So Jesus invites us to follow Him, to hunger and thirst for God, and to feast on the goodness that comes from God alone.
The other side of that coin is that anything we love and trust more than God is certain to fail…and lead us into misery, destruction and hell.
And it’s for this reason that Jesus repeatedly warns us against the seductive power of possessions, knowing that our desire for them can take us captive and separate us from God.
Mammon Jesus calls these possessions…this stuff.
“You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Serving Mammon has been a temptation in every generation, but it is especially tempting in our own generation—caught up as we are in the pursuit of riches on an unprecedented scale!!!
Just take a look around at the houses that are being built, all over the country.
McMansions, many folks call them.
No one on earth needs that much space!
And what about the size of our cars?
And television sets?
It’s really getting crazy!
We seem to worship stuff more and more and more!!!
The problem we face is that our desire to have more stuff is addictive.
It begins to define our lives and soon takes control.
The “good life” is seen as a life of prosperity, which is an essential part of the American dream, but life defined this way is actually hostile to the Way of Jesus.
“But I am not rich,” we may instinctively reply.
But, compared to 99 percent of history’s human population, or even compared to the vast majority of people in the world today, we are rich indeed!
In any case, none of us has to be wealthy to covet wealth.
It is the love of wealth, not the amount of wealth that starves our souls, and our culture seems to foster this love of wealth!!!!
The word culture is rooted in the Latin word cultus—which means a system of religious worship.
Culture is the way of life that grows out of the beliefs and values of a people—not necessarily the ones we profess to have, but the ones we really do have!
What beliefs and values do we really have?
How fat is our wallet in proportion to what we give to the Lord?
Do we buy things for ourselves that make others envious?
Where is the love in that?
Are we part of the culture of materialism or the culture of the Kingdom of God?
We can’t have it both ways!!!
It’s about choices, isn’t it?
And it’s about priorities.
“No one can serve two masters.”
We have freedom of choice.
We are given the shrine of liberty.
In our passage for this morning, our freedom of choice is narrowed down to two things—God and Mammon.
Jesus taught repeatedly that we must choose between two masters…
…we are to be sheep or goats…
…figs or thistles…
…we are to choose between right and wrong…
…the world or the Father…
…the broad road or the narrow road…
…time or eternity…
…heaven or hell…
…yes, we must choose.
What is our Center?
What or Who is our Lord?
It is a precarious thing to be half in the world and half in the Kingdom of God.
One scholar suggests: “Do not touch Christianity unless you are willing to seek the kingdom of heaven first. I promise you a miserable existence of you seek it second.”
But, is that not, what so often, so many of us do?
We seek pleasure first, and find nausea.
We seek safety first, and become paranoid.
We seek profits first, and find that we have empty lives.
To serve Mammon is to turn away from God.
To serve God is to reject Mammon and become recipients of a totally unmerited love, a love that enables us to let go of anything to which we are held captive and to follow Christ!
My friends, following Jesus puts us sharply at odds with the world’s values.
If it does not, we may need to re-evaluate our commitment to Christ!
The Bible shows us not only the way to heaven, but our purpose on earth as well.
It urges us to grasp two things:
First, faith in Jesus as the One Who rescues us from sin and death and hell; and second, the faithful life that follows our salvation!!!
Is faith in Christ, for you and for me, merely a safety blanket for a self-seeking life or is it a radical trust in the God who cares about us so passionately that, in Christ, God has suffered humiliation and death in order to reclaim us as God’s children?
To affirm the latter is to accept transformation of our lives and our values as part of God’s plan for us.
And that, my friends, puts us on a very different path than the path of the world!!!
The starting place for all Christians is not the question: “What do I need to give up to follow Jesus?”
The starting place for all of us is the Good News of Jesus’ victory and the question Jesus asked His disciples in Mark Chapter 8: “Who do you say that I am?”
Who do you say that Jesus is?
By discovering Who Jesus is, we discover ourselves!!!
And we are set free to live humanely as humans as we are troubled by the desperation of people.
What will we do to help, we who are so prosperous and who belong to the One Who said, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail….For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”?
You may remember my telling you a couple weeks ago about a classmate from high school who has gone from being, among other things, a major Kleptomaniac to becoming a Christian and a loving family man.
I received an email from Brian this past week.
In it he wrote, “I get choked up more often these days Ken, its hard to look and see so much sin and avoidable suffering.”
This is coming from a person who once bragged about stealing 20 bucks from a classmate’s dresser drawer, and when on the basketball team made fun of another kid who had to leave early in order to attend a function at church.
Yes, in discovering Christ, we are free to become truly human!
I wrote back to Brian and basically said, “It’s a good thing that you get ‘choked up’ by the desperation of the lost. If you didn’t there would be something wrong with you.”
Do you ever get choked up about the desperation of the people who do not know the love of Christ?
Choked up…and thus compelled to do something to help them…not judge them!
Members of a Christian theatre troupe spent $90,440 on a full-page advertisement in USA Today that ran nationally a few weeks ago, proclaiming “enough is enough.”
What they are upset about involves a woman named Kathy Griffin.
In accepting the Emmy for her Bravo reality show, “My life on the D-List,” Griffin said that “a lot of people come up here and thank Jesus for this award. I want you to know that no one had less to do with this award than Jesus.”
She went on to hold up her Emmy, make an off-colour remark about Christ and proclaim, “My award is god now!”
Why should Christians be so shocked by this?
Why should Christians take this kind of thing so personally and become angry with Kathy Griffin?
Why should Christians expect the lost to act as if they were saved?
We need a spirit of compassion toward the lost, not a spirit of angry reaction!
What a waste of money!
Christians spending over $90,000 to chatize an unbeliever for “persecuting them.”
What could really be done for the Kingdom of God with all that money?
Here at Grace, there is typically only one Sunday out of the entire month where we meet or exceed our budget, and therefore we are behind.
A few months ago, an unnamed person gave us a challenge.
“Each week that we, as a church, meet the budget I will match dollar for dollar what you have exceeded.”
We’ve only exceeded the budget twice since this challenge was made.
And the challenge is only valid for one more month.
What an opportunity we have to make a huge difference in our community and in our world for Jesus Christ.
How fat are our wallets?
How much more should we be giving for the work of the Lord; for the salvation of the precious souls of humankind?
It’s about choices and it’s about priorities.
“No one can serve two masters.”
A lawyer, who had spent his life accumulating vast amounts of wealth through frivolous lawsuits was on his deathbed.
He told his wife, “When I die, I am going to take my money with me.”
“How in the world are you going to do that?” asked the wife.
“I have a plan,” the lawyer replied.
“I want you to grab two of the biggest pillow cases you can find, and go down to the bank.
Have them open my account and stuff those pillow cases full with my cash.
Then, I want you to go up into the attic and hang those pillow cases to the ceiling.
When I die, I’ll grab them on the way up!”
The man’s wife did what he had asked.
Sometime after the man had passed away, his wife went up to the attic to clean up a few things.
While in the attic, she saw that those pillow two pillowcases—filled with cash—were still hanging from the ceiling, just as she had left them.
“Darn,” the woman snapped, “I knew I should have put that money in the basement!”
We are the Body of Christ called United Methodists who meet at 9833 Hixson Pike in Soddy Daisy.
We are people who send missionaries, and ourselves, into the world, to live as servants for Christ.
We are the Body of Christ who minister in more than 100 United Methodist colleges and universities, as well as support 13 theological schools to educate our pastors.
We are the Body of Christ that bears one another’s burdens by reaching out in times of need and disaster in the name of Christ for the salvation of the world.
We are the Body of Christ connected together.
We do more than express a concern for the worker, the sick, the poor, the aging, the impaired, the oppressed, the unsaved.
We struggle together to help.
We are Christ’s Body on this earth.
We are called to make disciples of all nations, to baptize in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost…
…we are called to work in our community…in the world for the salvation of all!!!
This is what we are about, and if we are going to be able to do what God has called us to do…
…we cannot serve both God and Money!!!
The choice is ours to make.
It’s up to us.
God has entrusted us with so much.
We have so much potential!
Where will we store our treasure?
Who will be our Master?
We cannot serve two!
At this time, please take out the insert entitled “John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer.”
Let’s pray this together in spirit and in truth.
